March 2018 Summaries

Code reviews are conversations about proposed changes, serving both technical and cultural purposes. They help find bugs, identify security concerns, ensure style consistency, maintain code quality, train team members, foster ownership, and provide an opportunity to learn from others. Effective code reviews require adjusting communication styles according to the intended audience and relationship with them. The goal is to build a community of developers eager to contribute, promoting a quality product. Participants must respect each other's expertise, assume good faith, and strive for clarity and friendliness in their feedback. Successful code reviews result in higher quality changes, strengthened relationships, and increased understanding among team members.

The latest report from DigitalOcean's Currents, a quarterly survey of developer experiences, reveals interesting insights into various trends in software development and the tech industry. The survey, which gathered feedback from 5,993 participants, highlights the growing adoption of continuous integration and delivery among developers, particularly in larger organizations. It also shows strong opposition to the repeal of net neutrality in the US by the FCC, with a significant majority of developers voicing their disapproval. Moreover, the report indicates that many teams are actively preparing for the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), with notable engagement from European countries such as the Netherlands, Belgium, and Sweden. The survey will be published quarterly to provide an overview of the latest trends among developers.

The new Control Panel Dashboard from DigitalOcean aims to simplify the developer experience by providing a single, intuitive interface for managing cloud infrastructure and applications. The dashboard offers "at-a-glance" visibility into active resources, shortcuts to team management, and other common tasks, while also exposing more helpful links to status pages, tutorials, API documentation, and support portals. This update is part of DigitalOcean's ongoing effort to make it easy and intuitive for development teams to operate and scale production applications in the cloud. The new dashboard replaces the Droplets page as the default home page and will roll out to all users over the course of the week.

Amanda Brazzell, DigitalOcean's Office Experience Team Lead, has successfully implemented a remote culture that supports over 200 remote employees, making up over 50% of the company. By replicating in-office perks and creating opportunities for remote teams to connect, such as "watercooler talk" mediums and regular team meetings, DigitalOcean has driven dispersed employee engagement and job satisfaction. The company's efforts have resulted in remote employees scoring higher in engagement than any other subgroup, with benefits including workstation programs, accommodation at corporate apartments, and travel reimbursement. By keeping the needs of both in-office and remote employees in mind, DigitalOcean's programs have become inclusive and effective, removing obstacles to communication and fostering cohesion across teams.

DigitalOcean is committed to its community, believing that contributing knowledge and resources benefits not just themselves but all members. The company has received significant support from the open source community in return, with contributors building tools using their API, hosting Meetups globally, sharing stories, and more. To recognize some of its most active Community contributors, DigitalOcean is highlighting three individuals: Marko, Mateusz, and Peter. These contributors embody the best qualities of the community, including enthusiasm for open source and a passion for knowledge-sharing. They have made significant contributions to projects such as doctl, tutorials on various topics, and organizing Meetups. The company looks forward to recognizing more Community members in the coming months and encourages others to get involved.

In this episode of The Deep End Podcast, Attentive's founder and CTO Pedro Araújo shares insights on building a tech product from scratch, covering topics such as adopting new open source technologies, onboarding junior developers, and learning about cloud infrastructure. DigitalOcean's Hatch program head Hollie Haggans introduces the podcast, while also discussing her own experiences with startups and cold brew coffee. The conversation aims to provide valuable information for sales teams looking to simplify their pipeline management. Attentive was founded in 2015 by a small team that is itself focused on scaling, having participated in accelerator programs like Techstars.